Proving Fault in Rear End Auto Accident Personal Injury Case |
Rawls v. Progressive Northern Ins. Co., ___ A.3rd ___, 310 Conn. 768 (2014)
In a car accident case where there was no evidence as to what the defendant driver was doing when he crashed into the plaintiff’s car from behind, the Connecticut Supreme Court looked back to a 1932 case involving a team of horses to rule that a jury could find that the driver was careless because the accident occurred in broad daylight on a straight road.
It was 5 pm on June 14, 1929. Edward Stevens was driving his father’s car on the road from
Hartford to Middletown. Up ahead, he
saw a slow moving line of traffic following a team of horses pulling a baker
wagon, which was probably returning home after distributing the bread and
pastries that had been baked that morning.
Edward told the jury he signaled and slowed down.
Behind Edward, William J. Ghent, Jr. was a passenger in a
car driven by Thomas Hellyer. Thomas hit Edward’s car from behind and the
impact tragically threw William from the car onto the pavement, killing
him. (Seatbelts were not available in
cars until the Nash automobile company made them an option in 1949.)
Thomas told the jury that he drove into Edward’s car
because Edward tried to pass the line of cars but suddenly swerved back due to an oncoming car
. Edward denied
doing this. The jury believed Edward,
not Thomas, and said that Edward was not responsible for this fatal accident.
Thomas appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Court concluded that there was “abundant
evidence” to support the jury’s decision, stating, “from our examination of the
evidence, it would appear that the jury might reasonably have concluded that
the sole cause of the accident was the negligence of the
operator of the car in which [William] was riding” because it “was broad
daylight on a clear day,” the “road was straight,” and Thomas “had a full view
of the [Edward’s] car and of the traffic ahead, and had abundant opportunity
either to have stopped his car if under reasonable control or to have turned
out to the right and avoided the accident.”
Fast forward to a red traffic light in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, at 11:30 pm on March 27, 2006.
Ronald Rawls stops at the light and about 15 seconds later hears a “loud
noise” and is “hit from behind real hard” by a car driven by Zabian
Bailey. Ronald tells the jury that he
“did not see Bailey’s car prior to the collision, did not know where Bailey was
looking when the accident occurred, was not aware of Bailey’s speed, and could
not state whether Bailey had applied his brakes or swerved prior to the
collision.”
The jury decided that Zabian was responsible for this
rear end accident and gave Ronald money for his medical bills and personal
injuries. (Zabian did not have
insurance, so Ronald’s lawyer filed a claim against Ronald’s own insurance
company, Progressive Northern, which was responsible for the accident under the
uninsured
motorist part of Ronald’s policy.)
Progressive appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court,
which threw out the jury’s verdict, noting that Ronald’s recollection of a loud noise did not prove negligence and he did not have any eyewitness to prove
that Zabian had been negligent. Unhappy
that he would not get anything for his personal injury case, Ronald had his
lawyer appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court.
A lot was riding on the Supreme Court’s decision. Think about it. The most common car accident personal injury case is a rear end
accident. Many times, if not most of
the time, the driver and passengers in the car that gets hit do not see the car
that hits them before the crash. They
are looking forward, the driver waiting for the light to change, the passengers
seated normally, eyes forward. There are often no witnesses to an accident
or the witnesses often leave before the police arrive.
If the Appellate Court’s decision became the law, no one
could recover money for a rear end personal injury car accident case unless
they were looking backwards or had witnesses to prove that the other driver was
not paying attention. The case was so
important that the Connecticut
Trial Lawyers Association asked permission to file a brief (written
argument) with the Supreme Court.
Fortunately for Ronald
— and for anyone that gets hurt in Connecticut when
a careless driver hits them from behind
— the Supreme Court overturned the Appellate Court
and gave Ronald the money that the jury had awarded him for his personal injury case. Looking back to Edward Stevens and the slow
moving team of horses, the Supreme Court stated, “The present case is similar
to Ghent v. Stevens … in which this court found that there was sufficient
evidence to support findings of negligence and causation based on the facts
that there was a rear-end collision in ‘broad daylight,’ on a ‘clear day,’ and
on a straight road with a ‘full view’ of the traffic ahead.”
In reinstating the jury verdict, the Supreme Court
stated:
First, the jury could
have considered the fact that the plaintiff was stopped at a red traffic light
and that traffic lights are normally highly visible to drivers. The jury also
could have considered that, because the weather was clear and the road was flat
and straight, the traffic light and the two stopped cars at that light probably
would have been visible from a great distance. In addition, the jury could have
inferred from the fact that the plaintiff was stopped for fifteen seconds prior
to the collision that the traffic light was red for at least fifteen seconds,
if not
longer …. Bailey thus would have had ample
opportunity to react and avoid the collision if he
had been acting with reasonable
care.”
Summing up: Have
car insurance. Watch out for traffic
ahead of you. Wear your seatbelt. And if you are hit from behind and suffer personal injury in Connecticut, get a lawyer
who can remind the court about those horses pulling the baker’s carriage back
to Middletown.
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